On 9 July, the group of new employees were invited to walk around Paisley as a “training exercise”.
Ella said something “felt off” when they couldn’t see the bus that Darryl Smith said he had brought.
They stopped outside what he described as the “Haggis Waggon Tours’ head office” on Paisley High Street. The building was vacant and locked up.
The same address was listed on the business’ website under the ‘contact us’ section, but the landlord of the building confirmed to the that Darryl Smith does not hold a lease there. The contact address has now been changed to say ‘Edinburgh’.
Darryl Smith told the he had built the website himself and mentioning that address had been a mistake.
“That spot was only ever used as a meeting point for new tours leaving from Paisley,” he said.
Despite the “red flags”, Ella decided to give Darryl Smith the benefit of the doubt and agreed to shadow a Harry Potter themed tour on 13 July.
She was due to be picked up on one of the Haggis Waggon Tours buses in Paisley at 8am, along with three others.
But after four hours, no vehicle had arrived.
Ella says Darryl Smith assured the group there had been a mix-up and claimed to be dealing with domestic issues.
She said: “When the original concern with the buses was brought up and it was pointed out that the pictures that he was using on his social media and on the website were AI, he had given us the excuse that he hadn’t had all the buses wrapped yet,” she says.
“I think to this day none of us have actually seen the buses. They don’t exist, do they?”
Darry Smith says the coaches “do in fact exist”.
“Images online of tour buses are AI as [the] company is relatively new and we are in the process of getting coaches wrapped with our ‘Haggis Waggon’ design,” he said.